


Manhattan Schist

by danwriteskink



Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: Breathplay, Extremely Dubious Consent, Harold has the tentacles, Just a lil bit of breathplay, Multi, So many tentacles, Tentacles, Weird seafood, d/s dynamics, john is an asshole
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-13
Updated: 2019-10-13
Packaged: 2020-12-14 06:42:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,732
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21011453
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/danwriteskink/pseuds/danwriteskink
Summary: Lionel knows he isn't the only one John's fucking, it's just that the other guy is leaving weird marks on John's ass.





	Manhattan Schist

**Author's Note:**

> Manhattan schist is the geological term for the bedrock that forms the island of Manhattan. 
> 
> This was written for Season of Kink 2019, for the Tentacles square. 
> 
> I have no idea why I wrote more than 10k words of Harold the randy telepathic tentacle monster. I just... When did this become my life?

Lionel knows he's not the only person John's fucking. He's not so naïve as to assume that this is some mutual romance. It's not even a romance, really, more a desperate spur of the moment fuckfest that keeps on happening. It's just, one early morning John is asleep across Lionel's legs and Lionel takes advantage of the light pouring through John's stupid huge windows to push the blankets down, check the dressing on John's hip, see if it's bleeding through after all that tussle. The dressing is fine; this Doctor Tillman seems to know her stuff, for all she looks about twelve years old to Lionel's eyes. No, that's not the weird thing. The weird thing is the row of sucker marks across John's ass. 

They're livid, the skin raised around the edge of each perfect circle. Lionel traces a finger around the rim of one the way you make a wine glass sing, and John shifts in his sleep, thrusts his spent cock against Lionel's shins with an unhappy noise. 

Lionel looks at the row of circle bruises, the way each one is sequentially smaller than the last, and thinks that it's as if something lashed out at John as he walked away, catching him across the ass like the crack of a whip. It couldn't be that, of course, but what the hell? He pushes a finger experimentally into the centre of one mark, and John's legs part, his thrusting gets more focused. There's a name on his lips as he comes awake and pulls Lionel to him, but Lionel doesn't quite catch it.

* * *

Lionel pretty much knows the full gamut of marks that people make on other people: teeth, weapons, hands, shoe tread. Burns, bruises, cuts, brands, abrasions, chemicals, ice, rats, insects, birds – it takes something really special for it to surprise him. This one freakazoid used to let his fish nibble on his victims, some rare coral fish that they had to check with Fisheries and Wildlife to get a bite pattern. He's never seen sucker marks, not like that. Not with that level of symmetry, not at that size. 

He spends a morning idly cruising google, finds nothing, then calls a friend in forensics. That turns out to be a mistake, because she gets really excited and wants photographs. Lionel has to invent a whole jurisdiction issue just to get out of it. 

In the end, he decides that it doesn't matter what it was. Mr Fantastic leads a mysterious life. Maybe Glasses has a tank full of squid at their secret base, wherever the fuck that is. Lionel doesn't want to know. Except he really, really does want to know. 

A few weeks later, he wakes up to find John standing at the end of his bed, one hand wrapped in a torn piece of someone else's shirt and his nose bleeding, and amorous as he always is after a fight. Lionel has to fight him off. 

"I'm not kissing that – no!" He shoves John in the middle of the chest, and John backs off, expression thunderous. "Come on, you weirdo. First aid's in the bathroom." 

In the bathroom, lit by the flickering tube over the vanity, John leans over, lets the blood drip into the sink while Lionel, still naked, dabs iodine on the slash across his hand. 

"You should go get this stitched up," he says, peeling a butterfly closure off the backing strip. Pulling it closed with tape does sweet FA for the bleeding, but at least there's not a flap of skin hanging off anymore.

"S'fine," John says, voice muffled. He tries to stand, but Lionel pushes him down. 

"You're still bleeding, you idiot. Stay there a bit." Lionel's about to go get some ice for the back of the man's neck when he realises that there's something under his fingertips, something raised up on the nape of John's neck. He spreads his fingers apart, shifting the short hair back, and he sees a perfect circle, ridged up like a brand just below the hairline. In the fluorescent light, on John's pale skin, the bruise is purple-blue and still blushing up, like the swirling colour of a fantasy planet. He brushes it with a fingertip, feather-light. John flinches away, but not before Lionel feels the skin hot and livid, when the rest of John is cold and starting to quake with fading adrenaline. 

Maybe it's the shock of waking to a bleeding man at his bed, or maybe it's his detective instinct, but Lionel can't stop the words spilling out. "This is fresh. The fuck were you fighting out there?" he asks. 

John's hand snaps out, grabs Lionel's and pushes it up and away from his body. He swipes the other across his face, where the blood has slowed to a trickle, and then grips Lionel by the jaw so hard he's pretty sure he'll have weird marks at work tomorrow. Lionel tries to break his hold with one arm, and ends up with it twisted behind his back as John frogmarches him to the bed. 

"You don't ask me about that," John snarls, and bends him over. He tugs Lionel's arm up so high he yells in protest, but John ignores him, just works on getting Lionel's belt unbuckled. Lionel thought they were past this physical overpowering thing John has, but apparently not. It's not that Lionel hates it – by now he can admit that he gets off on John having the upper hand when they're fucking, which is pretty damn well-adjusted of him, he thinks – but a few minutes ago, Lionel was in caretaker mode, and he generally appreciates a few minutes to switch gears and get into the right mood for John to push him around. Plus, lately John has been a little more respectful in the way he manhandles Lionel, so pulling a shoulder out of joint seems a little out of character. There's no chance to protest though. Lionel's face is mashed against the rumpled bedding. He can hear John scrabble for lube in the bedside table drawer, and he groans. This is gonna be rough. 

"That's not yours," John says, the words harsh and hot against the nape of Lionel's neck, right where the sucker mark was on John, and somehow that comparison makes Lionel squirm, makes him grind his cock into the rumpled sheets. The inescapability of it, the fact that he couldn't stop John now even if he wanted, it all starts to crawl through Lionel's brain, lighting up the worst parts of his mind, showing him how much he wants to be treated like this. It makes him want to cry, with pleasure or shame, he's not sure, but he can feel the tears starting to gather. Not that it matters.

John has two fingers inside Lionel now, opening him up with brusque efficiency designed to be pleasurable for only one person here tonight. He knows Lionel's body too well by now, well enough to avoid the places that Lionel likes. No brush along the prostate, not even to see Lionel squirm. It's just scissoring and stretching, another finger, another stretch. It would be clinical, if it weren't for the hot breath on Lionel's neck, or the tension of John's body where it presses him to the bed. 

Lionel gasps when he feels John's cock at his ass, and a few seconds later, he's scrabbling for a grip on the sheets. John leans his bodyweight into it as he slides in, holding tight to Lionel's hips so there's no way for him to shift or avoid John's cock. It just goes in, slippery with lube, hard and long. Lionel's making noises into the sheets now, little panting cries which John ignores. Lionel can't think, and things white out a little as his ass stretches around John's cock. Once he's in, John grabs Lionel's hair, pulls his head back so he's staring at the bedhead, and starts to move.

It doesn't take long: John's always brisk when he's mixing anger and arousal, and the way he goes at Lionel, fast and desperate, says that he's really mad tonight. Once there's a rhythm, though, Lionel starts to pull himself together a bit, manages a gusted, "Come on," that's more of a whine than an actual verbalisation. At the sound, John's other hand, bleeding through the butterfly closure, mashes warm against Lionel's mouth, and the pace of his thrusts increases. 

Lionel can't really breathe now, with his head arched back and his mouth covered. Each desperate gasp tastes salt and copper on his tongue, from the open wound on John's hand. An odd thought drifts through his mind as it is slowly starved of oxygen: _Really. This is overcompensation, John._ With it, comes the realisation that the mark on John's nape is a possessive thing, a dominating thing. Someone likes John on his knees, head bowed, passive and obedient. 

"No," John says with as gasp as he comes inside Lionel, but the joke's on him because Lionel is coming too. His cock spurts into the folds of bedding, over and over as he imagines an inhumanly long, suckered arm holding John still by the nape of the neck, owning him, maybe punishing him for being this way. 

John is gone by the time Lionel's senses come back to him. Lionel picks himself up off the bed with a grunt, finds he's covered in John's sweat and John's blood, not to mention the come dripping down his legs when he stands. He pulls the sheets from the bed, grabs a clean towel and takes himself back to the bathroom to wash. 

He's shampooing his hair, blinking away the suds, when it occurs to him that he's never used the word overcompensation in his life. It's not really in his day-to-day vocabulary. Where the fuck did that come from, he wonders, but then the hot water is dwindling and it's time to get out, clean the blood off the sink and get himself dry.

* * *

He's sore at work the next day. He doesn't shave, in the hope that the stubble will make the little row of bruises along his jawline less obvious. Nothing fools Carter, though. She gives him a narrow eyed gaze as he settles gently onto his chair and switches on his computer. 

"I'm fine," he says, before she can formulate a polite enquiry. "Just took things a little too far at the gym." That explanation is so whacked out that she laughs, though she still looks worried. 

Lionel's not expecting an apology, though he wouldn't say no if Tall, Dark and Deranged showed up with a bunch of flowers. Some acknowledgment of what happened would be nice, you know? He knows how this thing goes, though, from the early days of discovering that the psychopath who's been stalking you actually want to plow your ass. John's gonna feel like crap, spend as much time as he can away from Lionel until he snaps and does the whole thing all over again. Hopefully this time with a little more foreplay, he thinks, feeling every muscle from his ass to his neck complain. His phone rings and he jumps, winces, and looks at the screen. The caller is blocked, which means it's either Wonderboy or his partner in tweed. He flips it to silent, drops it onto a legal pad so the buzzing is muffled, then watches it ring out. After a few moments a text arrives. 

_Answer your phone, Detective._

Only one person he knows uses full punctuation in texts like that. He waits for the screen to light up with another incoming call and answers it before the buzzing can get underway. 

"What do you want?" he says, pushing away from his desk and walking to the bathroom that every cop in the squad uses for their private conversations. 

Finch's voice is less pissed off than Lionel expects, considering his ideas of phone etiquette. "I thought that it was probably time we had lunch, Detective. That is, if it suits you, of course." 

Lionel shifts on the toilet seat, trying to imagine him and Finch sitting down to some fancy twelve-course meal that cost some factor of a hundred more than his weekly pay. "Yeah, sure," he says, because a guy can't say no to a meal that costs as much as a car. A really nice car. 

Finch gives him an address and a time, and hangs up without another explanation. 

"Well, this can't get any weirder," Lionel says to himself (and probably to Finch, who is always listening, after all.) Then he goes to wash his hands and get back to work. 

The restaurant is batshit rich, so upper-crust that they don't give Lionel's cheap-ass suit a second glance. He is ushered to a booth with walls so high it's basically a private dining room, where Finch is already seated at a dark wood table. The waiter pulls out Lionel's chair, for fuck's sake, and he gingerly sits down. 

"It's good to see you, Detective," Finch says, and things are pretty normal for a while, considering they're in a restaurant where a bottle of wine costs more than Lionel can imagine spending on shoes. Weirdly, it's not as awkward as Lionel expects. They start with oysters, the big fat kind you never see at the markets because those all get diverted to fancy restaurants like this, and Lionel doesn't have to worry about which fork to use, because you slurp those suckers down from the shell. 

Finch is pretty deft at conversation, and though Lionel can tell he's being deliberately inclusive, it's kind of nice to have someone taking a bit of care. Makes the bruises and the low-down ache in his ass mean something. 

It does get a bit weirder as they go into the second course which is langoustine: oversized spidery shrimp things he's never seen before, served in a buttery, heart-attack sauce. He surreptitiously watches Harold, who breaks off a leg like the damn thing's a kitkat, then goes to town with a little fork. Lionel does the same, then rolls his eyes at the first mouthful. It's fucking fantastic. There's dill and garlic and white wine in that sauce, and the plus-size shrimp meat melts on his tongue. 

"I invited you here because I'd like to apologise." Finch is the kind of rich man who picks at his food – a bite of shrimp, a sip of wine, some casual weird conversation. What a waste of seafood. 

Lionel breaks open another roll, because there's a basket of the soft little fuckers and this sauce is too good to leave behind. "Apologise for what?" he says, after remembering to swallow first. 

"Mr Reese was ungentlemanly last night. Especially when you were being generous – the first aid, the lack of recrimination for him breaking into your apartment." 

Shit, thinks Lionel. The guy heard all of that. He doesn't know what it never occurred to him before. Finch listens in on everything else, why not eavesdrop on John manhandling him in bed. 

The waiters come in to clear away the plates, and Lionel takes one more swipe at his with the bread. Finch holds up a hand, and the waiters back away. Once they're alone in the booth again, Finch switches their plates over. "You seem to be enjoying them," he says. "And I don't have much appetite today." 

You listen to your friend fucking me over, Lionel thinks. I'm gonna eat your fancy shrimps guilt-free today. 

"He's quite repentant today. Mr Reese, I mean." Finch seems content with wine now. He's watching Lionel with a cool, evaluating gaze. 

Lionel takes the head off another langoustine and gets to work. "Whatever," he says. He was going to be cool about it, because after all, there's not much you can do about a guy who can turn any phone into a listening device, but actually, he finds he's really fucking mad. 

Finch sighs. "I'm sorry, I can see I've made some fundamental blunders here. I'm really not very good at this mode of communication." 

"What other fucking mode of communication is there? Were you going to send me a fucking telegram?" Lionel takes a big, inelegant swallow of the really fucking good white wine: it's dry and light and while he's not much of a wine guy, he can tell when something really complements the food, and this stuff tastes like it was made to go with seafood. Maybe it was. Who the hell knows. 

"I do miss telegrams," Finch says. "One had to be so succinct when one was paying by the character." 

Lionel stares at him, and tries to think when the last telegram was sent. It wasn't that long ago, right? They send them for weddings and shit. 

Finch goes on, as if one subject follows the next perfectly. "But, yes, I've made my mark, in my own way. And you've noticed it. In fact, you've been investigating it. I thought, perhaps you'd understood the source, but I realise now that you haven't taken that final step towards comprehension." 

At some point, in the middle of parsing this long, nonsensical string of words, Lionel realises that Finch is speaking, but no longer moving his mouth. Instead, he watches Lionel with an amused expression while the words just float into Lionel's mind. Somehow, they're still in Finch's wry, light tenor. It's just that the part where you hear with your ears? That's somehow been skipped. 

Lionel feels the fork slip from his fingers. It's heavy, and he knows it's going to hit the fine china plate, probably going to break it. 

"I understand this is startling, Detective," Finch's voice says. The fork never hits the plate, and when Lionel looks down, there's a slender, blue-black appendage coiled around the silver, holding it suspended just below his hand. The tentacle lays the fork gently down on the plate, and the metal makes the softest tick as it contacts the china surface. Then the thing uncoils and slides away over the linen to somewhere behind Lionel's chair. 

"As much as you like to joke about my vocabulary," Finch says with his mouth this time, as Lionel swivels in his chair to follow the movement of the tentacle. "I do sometimes mistake aspects of human communication. It's a problem, when one's primacy interface is telepathic. I can't always tell the difference between what you'd like to say, and what you actually decide you're going to say." 

The tentacle is coming from a small hole in the plasterwork, barely bigger than Lionel's thumb. It's long and obviously boneless, a swirling dark blue-black in colour, though it's dashed with moving lines of bright yellow, white and red, moving up and down the length of it like Morse code. 

The hole in the plasterwork is small and worn, and obviously long been a thoroughfare for rats and apparently tentacles. Lionel doesn't want to touch the tentacle – he knows nature's signs for venomous things – but he puts an ear to the wall, listens carefully, tuning out Finch's voice and the clatter of the kitchen somewhere distant. There's the faint rattle of old pipes behind this wall, and the hiss of steam. 

Back at the table, the waiters are clearing away the second course and laying out the third. They pay no attention to the tentacles, though they step over them carefully. 

Finch watches Lionel watching the staff for a reaction. "They can't see it. I've masked myself as a crack in the flooring," he says, as if that makes any sense. "It's easier than letting them walk all over me. Are you coming back to eat? The monkfish is very good." 

Lionel walks over to Finch's seat, pokes him in the shoulder. Finch sways slightly but remains substantial. 

"D'you drug me?" he says. He doesn't feel drugged, and these are surprisingly specific hallucinations. He sits down again, because tentacles or not, ten thousand dollar lunches don't happen every day. Not to Lionel Fusco, anyway. 

"No, Detective – may I call you Lionel? I feel that in the spirit of revelation, it would be appropriate – I did not drug you. I am trying to be frank." Finch makes a grimace. "It's not something I'm very good at." 

The monkfish is herb-roasted, tender and firm. Lionel sighs, and leans into the tentacle concept. He's worried that there's some kind of fairy tale gingerbread house thing going on here, but fuck it, when is he ever going to get to eat monkfish? He takes a mouthful – it's amazing – and another, while he reruns the last ten minutes of conversation over again. 

Meanwhile, Finch watches him, hands in his lap. He's stopped eating, or pretending to eat, or whatever he was doing before. Lionel's shoulder blades are itching, urging him to turn and look behind him. He imagines a whole handful of tentacles fanning out behind him like some fancy bouquet of poisonous flowers. 

"So, your primary interface is telepathic?" Lionel starts with that, because what the fuck.

"It is," says Finch. "This –" he waves a hand at his body, "Is primarily a telepathic projection, with a pinch of telekinesis for veracity. And please, you're very welcome to think of me as Harold." 

"What's with the tentacle?" Lionel thinks that is the next obvious question, and not, say, "Have you been telepathically watching your dude sex me up?" Because there was that voice in his head last night, those words that were definitely not his own. 

"You could call that a physical projection." Finch – no, better go with Harold – smiles at his own joke, though Lionel isn't sure he gets it. "My actual body is, well, it's large enough that I have quite a long reach. And, yes, I am sorry, I was present in your room last night. When John is in enough distress it tends to catch my attention. I apologise for the intrusion. And for John's poor manners. I didn't realise his intentions until too late, or I would have urged him to stop." 

The monkfish gets cleared away while Lionel processes this information. His eyes are watering with the effort of holding Harold's gaze. Harold blinks then, as if he's only just remembered that humans do that from time to time. 

The next course looks like pasta and tastes like fish. Slippery and salty with little consistency beyond that, they slip down easily, though they make Lionel's tongue tingle in a weird way. He's not sure he's into that. 

_Jellyfish. The venom is still active, though very much less potent._ The words just drift into Lionel's mind, instead of him hearing them in Harold's voice. 

Lionel slurps up his jellyfish and eyes Harold as if he were about explode. 

_Lionel._ The words are weirdly still chiding, even if it isn't in his voice. _If I wanted to hurt you, there's nothing you could do to stop me._

"Can you, uh, just use the voice thing?" Lionel says. He's ignoring the casual threat, because either it's a lie, or if it's true, there's nothing he can do about it. "I mean, this is a lot to take in all at once." 

Harold smiles at him and the expression is weirdly fond. "Of course. I want you to feel comfortable, after all." His lips aren't moving but Lionel is okay with that. 

There's another course after that: a tuna carpaccio, which is practically mundane after the first three courses. It's incredibly delicious, of course, and on a normal day, it would be something Lionel would fantasise about, but it's not as out there as jellyfish. Still, there's a truffle vinaigrette on the salad, and that's new to Lionel's palate. Kind of funky, too. Lionel eats his fancy sushi and salad, and watches Harold. "So, psychic projection? What does that mean?" 

Harold blinks out of existence. It's like a special effect: he's just gone. The chair is empty. Lionel looks around him, but nobody has noticed. Then Harold is standing beside him, one hand substantial on his shoulder. When he bends forward to speak in Lionel's ear, there's a puff of air against Lionel's skin, warm and maybe a little fishy. 

"It means that this is not my physical body, Lionel." Harold cups his jaw, brings their mouths together, and suddenly they're kissing. The voice keeps speaking, though, calm and steady. "It means that I make your brain think it's seeing me, make your body think that you're being kissed. My body is underwater, you see."

Harold sure kisses like this is his body, Lionel thinks. It's sly and deep, this kiss, and Harold's tongue moves inside Lionel's mouth, Harold's hands are warm on his face. This whole lunch has become dreamlike, and Lionel can imagine a dream where Glasses wants to kiss him like this, like he's the meal on the menu this afternoon. The wine and the good food have done their job, and for the first time in an age, Lionel can let himself feel precious and desirable. It's fine, it's fine, he's probably high, and nobody's going to know. 

"I'm so sorry John hurt you last night," Harold says, with one hand on Lionel's nape, touching the hair softly, stroking it back into position. He hasn't let their lips separate yet. Lionel's pretty sure he's going to need to take a breath soon. His head is swimming, either with whatever telepathy does to a human brain, or with deoxygenation or, or, jellyfish venom. Maybe it's because yeah, John was an ass last night, and it's nice to have an apology even if it isn't from Mr Psycho himself. 

Something cold and slick wraps around Lionel's wrist, and he breaks the embrace to look, though he's not surprised to see his arm is mostly engulfed in tentacles. There's ten of them, maybe more, some thin, others not, but all inky blue-black, all dashed and dotted with bright red, yellow and white. They're coming in from all over the restaurant at this point: over the bar, down from the pendant light above the table, across the table. He blinks at them, watches them twist and writhe up the length of his arm, over the jacket sleeve. Much like being pushed around by John, Lionel is surprised at how into it he is. 

"This you?" he manages to say, gesturing weakly at the mass climbing his arm. 

"They're all me," Harold says. It's somehow not terrifying, maybe because Harold's psychic projection is mouthing along his neck and it feels really good. It's weird how now he can see the difference between the tentacles and Harold's projected human body: the tentacles pull and snag on his jacket sleeve, get twisted around each other and fall away, are imperfect and present and real. Harold's human hand never snags in Lionel's hair, even on the short, curly hairs at the nape of his neck that Lionel's fingers still catch now and then. Harold never bumps Lionel's nose or kisses off-centre. It's subtle, real subtle, but once he notices it, Lionel can't avoid a little background analysis. It's the cop in him. 

The tentacles reach the edge of his collar, and one tentatively reaches out towards Lionel's neck. Lionel turns away from Harold's mouth to look at it, waving just below his chin. There's hundreds of the things now, and when he glances over his shoulder, he sees a thick rope of tentacles leading off towards the wall. It's wider across than he is. There's a tangle of them wrapping round the legs of the chair, some creeping over his socks. He can feel them, cool and slightly tacky against his ankles. When he turns back to face Harold, there are tentacles cupping his chin, exploring the outline of his jaw, heading towards his lips. 

"Yeah, let's wind this back a few steps," Lionel says, pulling away from Harold's gentle grip on his shoulder. In this new world of tentacles and telepathic projections, he's not sure where he stands with Harold. Will the man listen? Or just wrap him up, mummy-style in squishy blue-black arms? 

Harold steps back politely, and a few seconds later the tentacles retreat, slithering away like a child's toy that has been reeled in on a string. "There's no need to feel embarrassed or exposed, Lionel. I can make the wait staff not notice us easily enough." 

Lionel pulls his jacket straight, readjusts his tie where it had been tugged askew by a bunch of tentacles. "Yeah, and what happens when you get distracted? I've seen plenty of people think they can multi-task while they're getting it on, and most of them end up plastered to the windshield." 

"Are you all right?" Harold's concern must be like his blink reflex, Lionel thinks: a little delayed, a little off-centre. "I'm sorry; I forget that this can be quite an overwhelming experience." 

Lionel laughs, because God damn, the underestimation of that statement, but honestly, when he examines the situation, he's surprisingly okay with it. The kissing, yeah. The expensive meal? Definitely. The tentacles, eh, maybe. The weird marks all over John? Not so much. "How about we take a walk, let the concept settle in a bit? I've got some questions." 

Harold blinks his inhuman blink, as if Lionel having questions about him being the telepathic projection of a tentacle monster living under the city is a surprise. "All right," he says, after a moment, then signs the check.

* * *

They're walking down the street at a gentle pace, and Lionel watches their reflection in the store windows as they pass. A thought occurs to him, watching Harold's awkward gait – why would he need that, if he were just a projection? 

Harold answers him before he's voiced the question. "It's camouflage," he says. "I shape the projection that way to remind me to keep my presence innocuous. Otherwise I can be a little intimidating." 

Lionel thinks of the slender tentacles, the way they explored his limbs softly, tentatively. "Really?" he says. 

Harold stops and faces him. "Yes." And with that, he seems to loom a little taller, the air grows a little darker and cooler around him. Lionel's skin prickles, starts a cold sweat, and his stomach drops. Somewhere, in the part of his mind that used to be a caveman, a voice is screaming at him to run, run, run, you fucking idiot. He takes a step backwards, and his hand moves for his gun. Then Harold reels it in, and it's like the sun came out from behind a cloud except that there are no clouds today. Harold is just a guy: not big, not strong, not anyone of note except perhaps for that limp. 

"So you see, it's a kind of shorthand," Harold says and starts walking again. 

Lionel scurries to catch up. "Shorthand for what?" he asks. 

"Don't frighten the fish," Harold says, and smiles. 

They walk, and Harold explains, and Lionel processes. As far as he can tell, from the overly wordy and sometimes wandering explanation, there's a big old thing living under (and maybe around?) the bedrock. 

"Bedrock of what?" Lionel asks. They're eating ice-cream at this stage, and Lionel's not going back to work. The day has become strange and dreamlike, and the only thing that he really consciously understands is that things like this don't happen to people like him, so he'd better take it all in. 

"The bedrock of the island, Lionel. Manhattan schist." Manhattan Schist is not, as it turns out, some eclectic obscenity used at the turn of the century, it's that smooth, melty rock you see in Morningside Park and other places around the island. 

So, Harold is this big thing, this big old tentacled thing that's something like a squid and something like a cuttlefish. ("An ancestor of both, actually. Hence the colour changes. Chromatophores, you see.") And he's down there, way down there, deeper than people realise the water goes. ("I don't exactly want to encourage marine biologists, as you can imagine.") He doesn't move around much these days, but he's got limbs all through the city. Like, all through the city: when they sit down in Central Park to eat their cones, Lionel feels a tickle through his hair, and finds Harold's blue-black limbs are wound around the wrought iron of the bench, and are gently stroking the back of his neck. He puts his fingers back there, and they curl around each digit. It's ticklish and cool, and to be honest, he doesn't hate it. 

"Why Finch? Why not a whole lot of fishy names?" Lionel asks, while tentacles pat the soft inner skin of his wrist, investigate his metal watchband. His hand is on his knee now, so he can watch. 

Harold licks the last of the ice-cream off his own fingertips, neat and delicate with only a glimpse of pink tongue. "That would be a bit of a giveaway, Lionel. And you know, I do have a beak, after all." 

That leads into a whole explanation of cephalopod – that's the scientific term for what Finch is – and how their mouths are called beaks. There are some horrifying photographs on Google, which make Finch tsk. 

Harold's beak is the size of the Flatiron Building, as it turns out. 

It's odd to sit on this bench in the afternoon sun, his mouth a little sticky still from the ice-cream, while gleaming dark tentacles feel him up. Lionel leans back, lets them creep up his sleeves and down his collar. Harold, meanwhile, sits at the one end of the bench, apparently unconcerned by what is happening at the other end. 

Lionel's already a little bit better prepared for the way pedestrians just walk past, heads down or looking into the distance, completely untroubled by the man covered in a moving mass of tentacles. Psychic stuff, no big deal. And it's nice out here in the sun. He thinks of Harold, deep below the water, where light never reaches, and he thinks of the sun gently warming those blue-black limbs that are stroking his face, and it reminds him of summer make-outs on a towel in the back yard. He's warm and content and mildly turned on. 

It's weird, having the same emotional response that he had in the restaurant when the psychic projection was kissing him. It shouldn't feel the same, but it does, especially when they move to his lips. He thinks, as they brush the corner of his mouth, the little suction cups working gently over his skin, that of course it would feel the same, it's the same brain, probably the same sensory messages or whatever. 

_I like you,_ Harold says in his mind. _I am very fond of the way you view the world._

Lionel can't tell him to use his voice, because his mouth is busy right now, trying to work out how you kiss something that's slipped right inside. He has a brief image of himself sucking up spaghetti, his mouth a ring as the noodle disappears. At the other end of the bench, Harold chuckles. Lionel laughs too, then a tentacle brushes the wrong part of his palate and he chokes. The tentacles slither away and Harold's human hands are on him, supporting his chest, patting his back. 

"Are you all right?" Harold says. Lionel files away the fact that panicked Harold uses his human voice to express himself. Then he puts a hand over Harold's, gives it a quick squeeze. 

"I'm fine," he says. He is fine, but the moment, the long and dreamy moment that started in the restaurant, that's fractured now. "I really need to be getting back to work." Assuming that this isn't a dream or some anaphylactic reaction to lunch. 

Harold smiles and stands up, takes a moment for his psychically projected legs to adjust. Then he takes Lionel's hands, like some old romantic hero in a black and white movie. Just holds them in his, while Lionel sits on the bench. Harold's fingers are warm, and even if it's just a psychic projection, Lionel feels a little lighter about what happened last night. 

"I am sorry that John hurt you," Harold says. "I promise that I'll be watching him more closely now." 

Lionel shrugs. "We have a complicated thing, the big guy and me," he says. "I can't honestly say it was all one-sided." It's still good to hear, he thinks. Also, there's a tentacle stroking the side of Lionel's neck and he doesn't even find it strange now.

"I enjoyed our lunch today," Harold says. And then, "Would it be all right if I called on you in the future?" It's so old fashioned that it makes Lionel laugh. He didn't realise he was being courted. It's been a while. The tentacle at his nape is making little swirls in the soft hair there, like it's petting a cat. 

"Yeah, sure. As long as my kid isn't home, you're welcome." As he stands, Lionel thinks of all the mouse holes and crannies in his old building, pictures tentacles sliding through them and into his apartment. 

Harold kisses him on the cheek, gentlemanly and sweet, and not at all as if he has a beak the size of the Flatiron Building, and they go their separate ways.

* * *

Lionel sleeps heavily that night, and well. Maybe it's the good food, maybe it's the telepathic blah blah blah, but whatever the cause, he wakes feeling fresh and relatively optimistic. And if his dreams occasionally get a little dark and deep, well, Harold's voice is there to push back up to the more mundane weirdness he was used to at night. 

Lionel starts to notice bits of Harold Finch everywhere. There are tentacles curling around the stone columns of buildings, snaking down vents in the sidewalk, dangling from the awning of a food cart when he orders his breakfast. 

"Hey," he says to one sliding around his coffee maker in his kitchen. "How was your day?" He gives it a little pat, just slides one finger along the length of it like he's stroking a cat. The tip of the thing strobes dashes of yellow-yellow-yellow as it wraps around his index finger then snaps away, disappearing into the wall through a gap in the splashback tile. Lionel's learning that yellow means recognition. Maybe friendship? But he's not willing to go that far. Nobody's said anything about friendship.

John shows up a week or so after Lionel's lunch with Harold, skulking at the edge of the crowd while Lionel's investigating a homicide at a pizzeria. Lionel is deep in conversation with one of the unis when he sees John for a second at the corner of the restaurant, by the narrow walkway that leads to the back of the place. 

"Okay, keep canvassing, but we'll follow that up as soon as you've covered your area," he tells the uniform and sends her back to her patrol. Then he takes a little stroll down between the buildings to the little not-quite-alley where they keep the dumpsters. Harold's tentacles seem quite interested in the dumpsters, disturbingly, diving into the depths of the open ones, prying at the lids of the ones that are closed. 

"You better not be the one in my mouth the other day," he tells a thick one pulsing red-red-red as it lifts a lid and delves into the garbage. 

John is there, lurking between two dumpsters. It's the first time Lionel's seen him since that night – since that lunch with Harold – and now that his eyes are able to perceive the tentacles, he sees that there's five or six on John right now, in his hair, sliding down one sideburn to play with the corner of his mouth, curled around his shin, the wrist of the hand he doesn't usually shoot with. That one weaves in and out of his fingers, which John moves like he's rolling a coin over his knuckles. He's perfectly at ease with them all, and he gives Lionel a challenging look. An "I dare you to say something about this" expression. 

Lionel reminds himself of that afternoon when things were strange and dreamy, tentacles and vanilla ice-cream and Manhattan schist. "You know he can like more than one of us, right?" He steps in, closes the gap between the two dumpsters and effectively traps John there. He knows this will antagonise John, that Lionel would dare to even think he could make a power move, but maybe Lionel kind of likes that idea. He's getting more comfortable with it, and part of that is knowing that John gets pushed around too. That's something he could take to his therapist, if he had one, he thinks. 

_I could arrange a therapist, if you'd like, Lionel,_ Harold says. _If you think it would be good for your mental health._

John's face is thunderous, and he squares his shoulders, ready to show Lionel just how easily he can blow right past him. 

"Nah," says Lionel. "Pretty sure I've got a handle on things here." He breathes out as John grabs him by the throat, spins him and pushes his back to the wall. As John moves, the tentacles let go, drifting in the air, seeking targets to reattach to. When Lionel's body thumps hard against the brick, he hopes he didn't squash any of the little guys. Then he feels one snake up his calf, past his knee, towards his swelling cock, and he guesses they're all okay. John pushes Lionel upwards so he's on tiptoes, undoes Lionel's belt one handed, gets a hand into his shorts and around his cock. 

"Harold tells me I need to apologise," he says, keeping his gaze locked with Lionel as his hand moves on Lionel's cock. "That so, Lionel?" 

His grip is tight, and the way he's jacking Lionel is rough, way outside Lionel's personal comfort limit, but just because Lionel wouldn't jerk off this way doesn't mean it's not good. Maybe it's the oxygen deprivation, he thinks, wheezing in another breath, but this is fucking good, it's amazing. 

"Nah," he gasps, on the tips of his toes, with a killer holding onto the most sensitive part of him, treating it with less than absolute respect. Fuck, his hand moves fast; fuck, his thumb is chapped or callused or something because every time it swipes over the head of Lionel's cock he sees stars. 

Then he feels a tentacle circle his balls, feels a bunch of them sucker-walking over the thin skin of his sack, tugging at them, massaging them, stroking his taint, reaching for his asshole. Lionel can't breathe, Jesus, he can't get any air in. John jerks him faster somehow, and Lionel loses it, comes in his pants like a teenager. 

When John lets go, Lionel drags in a whooping breath, then another. John grins, crooked and cocksure, and kindly buttons Lionel back up again. The tentacles slide down his leg, away into the wall, apparently done with their business for now. Lionel thinks he was just in a threeway? But he's not sure. And his head is spinning too hard for him to figure it out.

"We good?" John asks, and honestly that's more concern than Lionel's ever got from him before. This might be a thing that works out. 

Walking back to the front of the street, he checks his reflection in the window of the pizzeria to make sure he doesn't look too – too what? Too much like John and a tentacle monster just gave him a hand job in the alley? – but if there's bruising on his throat, it's going to be below the collar, and his face isn't any redder than your average fat guy on a hot day. He's going to want to change his pants as soon as possible, though. He grabs one of the uniforms, points him back towards the dumpsters. 

"Make sure you get someone going through those, okay?" he says. He's learning the code for the tentacles now, and red-red-red means there's something bad in there. 

The uni gives him a horrified expression – it's a hot day and those bins haven't been emptied this week – but that's not Lionel's problem. He's a detective, after all. He can soar above all this mundane, messy stuff.

* * *

He checks himself out very thoroughly in the shower that night, but if there were sucker marks on his balls, he can't see them now. Touching himself does feel hypersensitive, though whether that's the tentacles or the fact that John needs to get his metro on and use some hand lotion occasionally, he can't tell. And then there's the collar of bruises round his throat. When he presses on them, he can feel himself getting hard again. He turns the shower to cool, lets it splash over his face. 

"Get out of here," he says to the investigative tentacles hanging from the shower railing like vines. "Unless there's enough of you to catch me if I slip over while you're feeling me up." 

He really shouldn't have said that, because the vines thicken up, multiply, until the shower rail starts to sag under their weight. 

"Harold, stay off the fixtures," he says into the air. "I don't have time for home repairs, come on. Not with the case load I'm juggling right now." 

_Of course, Lionel._ Harold's telepathic voice is less disturbing, though if his human body was here, Lionel thinks he'd still ask him to use his mouth to make words. The tentacles slither away back into the walls. 

Naked under the covers, Lionel should be straight off to sleep, but instead, despite the shower, despite the earlier mind blowing orgasm, he feels cranky and unsettled. 

"You around?" he says, and puts on the light. There are tentacles around his room, of course; there always are now. There's a bunch of them twining across the corner of the bed, there's some coming in over the window sill where he's left it open to catch a breeze. They're everywhere really, you just kinda have to de-tune your vision to be able to see them. Tonight they're strobing all colours: blue, white, yellow, red. Lionel thinks it's like some kind of default state. Or maybe just how Harold likes to be fancy. As he speaks, while he's still forming the words, a bunch of them slide over the sheets, weave into his hair, stroke his forehead with little butterfly-soft touches. 

He blows one away from the tip of his nose and it retreats, like the eyestalk of a snail. "Yeah, I know you're here like that, but can I see you? I think I wanna have this conversation face to face." 

Harold is there between blinks, just one second nothing, the next, Harold standing in his bedroom. If he'd thought that through properly, Lionel would have picked up some of the laundry off the floor first. 

"Hello Lionel," Harold says, and props on the side of the bed. It dips, which is an interesting telepathic effect, Lionel thinks. He runs his hand along the edge of the mattress to where his brain thinks it curves under Harold's weight. Does it? If he closes his eyes, tells himself that Harold wasn't there, would his hand find the mattress straight and even? 

Warm lips kiss his forehead, and he opens his eyes. He hadn't realised that he had closed them. 

"You analyse everything," Harold says, and pats his cheek. "It's something I like very much about you."

It's weirdly like having an imaginary friend, Lionel thinks. He props an elbow, rests his head on his hand, and for a moment, remembers being eight or nine, and how much he would have loved this. Apart from the sexy stuff. Speaking of which. 

"Hey, about this afternoon," he says.

Harold shifts his hand to Lionel's hair, stroking gently, like he didn't have his squiddy bits all over Lionel's balls this afternoon. "Yes?" he says. 

"So, we're like that, now?" Lionel says. "We're fucking? I'm cool with it, but you know, I want to clarify my position."

A tentacle curls round his ankle. "It seems a natural progression of our relationship," Harold says. "Should I have discussed the possibility with you beforehand?" 

There's a long, strong one snaked right up Lionel's arm, holding him still. Not so tight he couldn't shake it loose, but the suggestion is pretty clear. 

"Yeah, I think normal people would have done something like that first," Lionel says, as the tentacles start to rope him down to the bed. "What if you did stuff I wasn't into?" 

The tentacles pull tighter, dragging his arms up over his head, spreading his legs wide on the mattress. "Correct me if I'm wrong, but you seem to be into this," Harold says, in that dry, disconnected way he has when he's using his pretend human voice. 

He's right: Lionel's cock has sprung to attention, thrusting up towards his belly with the single-minded enthusiasm of a golden retriever. The thing with a telepathic connection is that all he has to do is think it, and it happens. And he isn't thinking straight right now. He doesn't think, "How do I make him stop?" or "What happens if Simmons drops round and I'm all tied up with squid parts on my bed?" No, instead of something sensible, Lionel thinks, "What would those things feel like over my nipples?" and they're there on his chest, investigating his nipples. There's seven or eight moving over his ribcage right now, but two break away from the pack, using their prehensile tips to circle a nipple each. One of them constricts tight on him, and he gasps, arches his back as much as the tentacles allow. 

"Interesting," says Harold, now at the foot of the bed, right in the middle like he's conducting an orchestra. "You're undergoing a battle between common sense and desire. You're trying to find reasons to tell me why you don't want this, but I can tell that you certainly do. You're very aroused, Lionel. You're hoping I do that again. You're hoping that it hurts a little this time." 

Lionel closes his eyes but Harold must be right, Lionel must really want it because both the tentacles squeeze hard, tug upwards, and Lionel almost comes on the spot with how good it feels. He slams back against the mattress, panting. 

"Wait! Wait," he says, his breath rough in his throat. "I don't – I don't always want what's good for me," he says. "I have – I try to have ways to stop myself going after bad things." The tentacles stroking his nipples creep forward, so that the suckers work over them. Lionel feels his eyes roll back with the pleasure-pain of that action, and he groans, thrusts uselessly into the air. 

Harold frowns, tilts his head as if he's trying to identify one sound out of many in his orchestra. "Ah, you're talking about impulse control," he says, at last. 

"Yeah," Lionel says, and his voice is getting awful breathy. The tentacles are criss-crossing in random stripes across his chest and belly, and a couple of really thick ones encircle his thighs like it's nothing. Lionel can feel the strength in them, and how easily they could pull him limb from limb. He's not used to feeling fragile or small in someone's arms. It's a novelty. 

"Of course I wouldn't interfere with your personal self-control," Harold says. "That's not how this works at all." 

"Well, I don't know that!" Lionel says, infuriated suddenly. "I don't know anything about how this goes." He's covered in tentacles now, which makes this whole argument ridiculous, he knows, but he still wants it out in the open. He can't let himself enjoy… whatever this is, without knowing that he'll come back from it the same person. 

A tentacle brushes his face, another sweeps his hair out of his eyes, and it's so tender, so gentle. "Oh," says Harold. "I understand now. You want to let go completely, but you can't do that without a lifeline." 

That's not quite what he meant, but maybe it's as close as a giant tentacle monster can get. "Something like that," Lionel says. 

"I could call John," Harold offers. 

"No, not this time," says Lionel. It's weird how calm he is, but there's something very soothing to being held like this. The tentacles have him suspended now. Just an inch off the mattress, judging from the way his heels brush the sheets occasionally. It's kind of like lying in a living hammock that effortlessly adjusts to your body's movement. And tweaks your nipples with just the right amount of pressure. Damn it, who knows how this all works? Lionel definitely doesn't want to be figuring this stuff out while Mr Fantastic is watching, while he'll have that little curled smile that's at least halfway a sneer. "Just you and me, okay?" 

Harold smiles an inhumanly calm smile. "Just you and me." The tentacles squeeze and relax, squeeze and relax, almost as though they are breathing with Lionel. None of them have touched his cock yet, though his nipples feel the size of silver dollars by now.

So it's just Lionel and Harold and, for Lionel's comfort, a timer set to an hour, so Harold can check in with him. Harold had a surprisingly long and explicit list of acts, once he understood what Lionel was talking about when he asked to know what Harold wanted to do. Lionel wonders a moment at Harold's fascination with the fact that Lionel would want to declare limits. Did John not ask all these questions? Did John not worry about things going past what he can take. 

"Part of the attraction for John is that I decide what he can take," Harold says, as the tentacles spread across Lionel's face, ease into his mouth, his ear, his nose. "I think he doesn't trusts himself like you do." 

Trust himself? Lionel would laugh, except he's learning a whole different method of fellatio. It's a steep learning curve. He tries not to bite down. He tries to figure out what is pleasurable to Harold, because he wants to make this good for Harold too. 

_Your pleasure is pleasurable,_ Harold says inside his mind, because Lionel's ears are blocked. _But also, I like holding your life in my grip._ The tentacles block off Lionel's airways, and he thrashes briefly. Before he has a chance to panic, though, they retract and he can breathe again. 

Now the tentacles are going for his dick, and in their grasp, he shivers. They're cool against his skin, and sometimes they glide, propelled by muscles or something, but sometimes they walk on their little suckers and Jesus, Jesus, that makes him want to die or come or both. He opens his mouth, and sounds come out that he can't imagine himself making. He can't imagine any vaguely human creature making sounds like he is right now, and that thought would have made him come on the spot, except that there's a tightness gripping the base of his cock now, impossibly firm and unwavering

_I have thought, since we met, that you had great potential for losing yourself in sensation,_ says Harold. 

There are tentacles cupping his ass, there are tentacles sliding between his cheeks, oh, Jesus, are they going to fuck him? Lionel isn't sure whether he desperately wants it, or wants it to stop.

_Do you want me to stop?_ Harold says. He doesn't say it like a threat, but the tension in the tentacles starts to slacken, and they slide away from his mouth, his nipples, his cock.

"No, no!" Lionel says, desperately, now that his mouth is unoccupied. "Fuck, no, I love this, don't stop." He does love it, actually. He loves that he has no idea what any of it is going to feel like, and he loves that for an hour, anything could happen, and Harold will look after him. 

_All right._ Harold's mental voice is so calm, so even, it feels like he's the third person in the room, watching with clinical detachment, compared to the frenzied exploration of his tentacles. 

His tentacles tighten up, pull Lionel's legs further apart, slide over his gums and under his lips so his mouth is wide, wide open. No need to worry about biting down now. The tentacles glide freely over his tongue, to the back of his throat, and when he gags, they press down hard on his palate, stopping the reflex quickly. There's no way to fight it, so, eyes watering, Lionel accepts the intrusion. It's weird as fuck, those things inside his throat, moving independently, pushing further and further down. 

Fortunately, by the time the first tentacle encircles his cock, the ones in his throat pull back, because the sensation makes him gasp and arch. It's stronger than a hand, the pressure even all the way around, and the tip explores the head of his cock with a touch as firm and pointed as a ball-point pen. Lionel pants as it draws circles around and around the slit, then nudges experimentally into his cock. It's too much, sensation bordering on overload, and as soon as he realises this, the tentacle backs off again, snaking around the base of the head of his cock instead. It's good – weird, but not too much – and Lionel sighs, thrusts his hips vaguely forward as much as he can while he's wrapped in tentacles. 

There's a tentacle at his asshole now, and it's slippery as hell, which give Lionel pause, because what the hell? Then he forgets all about it, as the thinnest part of it slips inside him. 

_There, now,_ says Harold, and there's a slight quaver to his voice now, like, passion maybe? Like, a sense of anticipation of how good it's going to feel to ream out his ass? 

_Oh, Lionel, it's how good you're going to feel,_ Harold says. _Once I learn the shape of you._ The tentacle pushes further in, and Lionel can feel from the stretch that it's getting thicker as it goes deeper. _There's just the mater of a little anatomical study…_ The thing changes shape – he feels it inside him, widening and flattening out – and starts to press down, moving slowly inside his ass, pressing, feeling, searching. 

"Oh, oh, fuck…" The words wheeze out of Lionel's mouth as it finds his prostate, presses hard against it, keeps the pressure on and on. 

_Would you like another?_ Harold says, like they're at high tea, like he's passing Lionel a gilt-edged fucking plate of macarons. 

"Fuck, fuck, yes," he gasps. "Do it." He hasn't even finished speaking when another tentacle slips inside and another. They're… they're twisting around each other in there, they're moving inside him. They're opening him up, holding him open. 

He's never had anything bigger than a cock in there before – he's never really seen the appeal of the more exotic stuff people put in their asses – but right now, he gets it, he gets the idea of being stretched so wide your mind whites out. 

_Oh, we're getting there,_ says Harold. _I do want to know exactly how much it will take to shut down that analytical part of your mind, Detective._

"Do it," Lionel says. "I want to feel that." 

There's a surge at his hips, and his body moves without any apparent command from his brain. Lionel's never seen his legs spread so wide before, never felt so helpless, as the tentacles thrust into him, so that he feels them writhing inside him, moving over and around each other and always pushing forward. The thin little one that had probed his cock head restarts its assault on his slit, and this time Lionel can see that it's dripping with clear fluid, thick and viscous, cool on his hot skin. He watches it slide into his cock, watches the hole stretch into a tight round circle, watches his dick jump and twitch as it's invaded. 

There's a moment, right before he passes out, when his whole body shakes and he swears he can feel each individual nerve lighting up. There aren't really words for the kind of pleasure that gives. Feeling his balls pull in tight and shoot out a stream of come is just one small part of the experience. He forgets how to shape words. He kinda forgets how to breathe. For that short, weird stretch of time, it's just him and Harold, him and this huge being hanging in space, regarding each other, bodies alight with sensation.

The next thing he knows, he's lying on the bed, sheets damp with sweat, hair plastered against his skin, and every muscle in his body sining with the release of tension. He lies there and watches his chest rise and fall, watches the curtains shift gently with the breeze. 

"Hey," he says, after a while, when he can finally focus on things, when he can see that annoying patch of paint that's starting to flake away from the wall, or that stray sock that escaped his last trip to the laundry. 

Harold appears in his room, and Lionel realises that the reason that whole materialisation thing is creepy as fuck is because there's no inrush of air, no indication that this Harold physically exists. He files that fact away under "Useless Things I Now Know About Squid Monsters', and rolls onto his side to face the man. The sheet peels away from his back under its own weight, so sodden is it with sweat. 

"Thank you; I enjoyed that very much," says Harold, who apparently is fine with small talk after potent cosmic tentacle sex. He's speaking this time, like, with actual words, and it's kinda nice that Harold checked what Lionel would prefer right now. Harold's voice is soft, somehow, and Lionel's brain ascribes a goofy human smile to go with it. In a moment, Harold has that very expression on his face as he reaches out a perfectly substantial hand to stroke Lionel's damp hair out of his eyes. 

That's good – even knowing that isn't Harold's body, physical contact is good. Harold's obviously been doing this for long enough to convince people he's really there, because his hands are warm. If Lionel shuts down the analytical part of his own brain that tells him there's nothing there, it's almost enough. 

Lionel can't shut down the analytical part of his brain. He's never been able to do that, and this is why he ended up with Mr Muscle in the back of a patrol car. If he could have kept his eyes front during that meeting with Diane Hansen, if he could have let someone else take care of the perimeter search, all that time ago, he wouldn't have come across John. Wouldn't be lying in a puddle of his own sweat after a tentacle monster has reamed out every possible orifice he has. Lionel shifts as the first sliver of doubt starts creeping in, as he knew it would. 

"You're uncertain," says Harold. "Is there something I can do to help resolve that?" 

"No," Lionel says. "It's just a thing that happens sometimes. Usually means… " He tries to put it into words and fails. Words are too small and slippery for what he's feeling right now, so instead, he closes his eyes and kind of pours out the feeling. After all, Harold's primary interface is telepathic, isn't it? Telepath this out for me, buddy, Lionel thinks at him. What makes this crawling feeling of worthlessness go away?

"Ah," says Harold. He doesn't vanish, in fact, he doesn't even stop stroking Lionel's hair, but there's a kind of absence to the way he does it, as if he's in the middle of a phone call, idly petting the cat in his lap. 

Lionel dozes a little, in a kind of emotional holding pattern. He'll be able to pull himself together soon, he thinks. He usually does, after all. The sweat is drying in the breeze from the window, and his skin feels tight and itchy from it. That's something normal, he tells himself. In a little bit, he'll manage to drag himself to the shower, wash off the sweat and come, and start to feel like something human again. 

Then the bed dips, and this time it's not a telepathic construct. Lionel doesn't know how he's so certain – is it that he can smell John's skin? Or that he knows the weight of him on this saggy mattress by now? He remembers the last time he and John were on this bed, and a little adrenaline finds its way into his system despite the all-over body exhaustion. He gets his eyes open, starts to wriggle into a more defensive position. John reaches for him, and Lionel can't stop the wary little cringe away from those fast moving hands. He's never sure until the last moment what mood John's in, and whether those hands are dealing pain or pleasure today. 

_I won't let him hurt you,_ says Harold, from the end of the bed, and the calmness of his voice wakes Lionel back up again. It's strange to see him standing there, completely dressed, completely unruffled despite the mind-blowing sexcapade he's just put Lionel through. _Isn't that right, John?_ The words, dry and crisp, make Lionel think of salt-chapped lips. 

"You know he likes it," John says. He puts his mouth to Lionel's throat, and God damn, Lionel's tired and drained but he can't stop himself arching back, offering more of himself to John's teeth. 

Harold lets him go for a few minutes, lets him mouth at the soft skin over Lionel's jawbone, lets him rest his flat white teeth on the big tendon down Lionel's neck. Lionel quivers under him, feels his body try to react but there's really nothing left in the tank. 

_That's not why I brought you here._ Harold's mental voice is quite different when he's talking to John. It's sharper, more authoritarian, and it seems to drive a serpentine writhe from John's body, as if he's wriggling to avoid a leash. 

_Lionel! You do have the most wonderful ideas,_ says Harold. 

Above Lionel, John's eyes narrow at him, and he puts his big hand where his mouth had been, finds Lionel's larynx with his forefinger and thumb. "What did you say to him?" 

"Didn't say anything," says Lionel, weakly as John begins to squeeze. "Can't help random thoughts, can I?" 

A tentacle, a thick one, appears over John's shoulder, and he's obviously so used to them that he doesn't notice, just keeps closing the gap between his finger and thumb with Lionel's voice box in between. Just when it's starting to hurt in a bad way, a bruising way, the tentacle rushes forward and snakes around John's neck, pulling tight. It still strobes dashes of bright yellow: familiar, familiar, familiar. Lionel is watching John's face, and before the irritated expression flashes across his face, John's eyes lid briefly, and Lionel sees his lips part. This turns John on, for all it exasperates him too. Interesting, Lionel thinks, and wishes again he were not exhausted. 

The tentacle stops tightening, and instead retracts a little, jerking John's head backwards, a sharp little leash check that moves his teeth away from Lionel's throat. John puts his hands up to stop it, and then jerks them away before his fingertips makes contact. 

_That's right_, Harold says. _You've learned better than to resist control by now, haven't you? But just as a reminder, since you seem to like showing off for Lionel…_ The dashes on the tentacle turn from cheery yellow to venomous red. John meets Lionel's gaze a moment, blue eyes pooling dark, and then the tentacle sparks blue light, sheeting with electricity. 

John's body jerks with it, though it can't be too massive a jolt, since all Lionel feels is the dull thump where John is in contact with him. John's nostrils are wide, his eyes enormous and he's furiously hard against Lionel's thigh, but he stays very, very still. Lionel finds his exhausted body tensing up with him, the two of them in each other's arms, John's eyes on his, and Harold's huge, dark presence looming over them somehow. When the second jolt happens, John makes a noise deep in his chest, eyes closed and body rigid against Lionel's body. Lionel realises he's coming. When it's over, the tentacle slides loose from John's throat, passes over his hair, ruffling it gently, and vanishes. 

"There, now," Harold says. "That's better. We'll have no more of that behaviour tonight." He uses his voice and it startles Lionel, makes him realise how quiet the room was. Then Lionel is thinking about the implications of 'tonight' in that sentence, with combined horror and intrigue. He's in that drowsy half-aroused state when your brain throws out the freakiest possibilities, and he wonders what that electric charge feels like from the inside. He's got to stop having random thoughts like that, when Harold can hear them. He's going to get…

"Later, Lionel, I promise. Sleep now. John, cuddle the man." 

The order, delivered in Harold's wry voice, sounds ridiculous but it obviously gives John permission to be gentle. John curls his arms around Lionel, pulls him close, crooks a leg over his thighs. 

"So kind of you, bud," Lionel says, breathing deep, smelling the gunpowder and drycleaning smell that haunts John's skin, even on his day off apparently. That's sarcasm, yeah, but honestly it feels so good to be held by someone solid, someone real. John's wearing an old, soft t-shirt, and well-worn, faded tracks, and his big hands are warm. Lionel starts to drift into sleep while tentacles stroke his hair, weave between his and John's body, move over and under the sheets. 

Before he drops off, he hears John whisper in his ear. "You're in the club now, Lionel. It isn't always good. You should know it's not all wedding night bliss." 

Lionel sniggers, too sleepy to guard his tongue. "Maybe so, but you make such a pretty bridesmaid." He's still casually aware of Harold's telepathic projection presence at the end of the bed, which is good, too. As he's falling into sleep, he imagines the foundations of his building reaching down into the Manhattan schist, which in turn nestles atop Harold's enormous back. He thinks they're in good hands.


End file.
